"I don't know - I guess maybe they'd know -"

"How?" he wonders, walking over to Hannah and sitting by her. He blinks at her computer. "What's that?"

    "A computer," she explains. "From the future."

"You want one?"

"Yeah."

Thumbnail computer. "They can't talk to each other yet, I'd have to put up a satellite. I can go do that."

"You sure it's a good idea to put up a satellite somewhere, just like that?"

Sigh. "No, I'm not."

"That I think a Tinker might be able to help you with. Easier than governments."

"Cool. The PRT was being really helpful - and will probably keep being really helpful - I could just trust them and do what they say. This country's probably not secretly a dictatorship."

"Well people come and go all the time," Nathan says dubiously.

    "And they helped me a lot," nods Hannah. Nathan scoots closer to her and snuggles up.

"I guess I could try asking random people, here and in Brazil, what they think of various criticisms of the government? And if they act scared to be near someone who is criticizing the government, that's a bad sign?"

"That's probably a bad sign," nods Hannah.

    "I wonder if that's worse than having no government at all," Nathan muses.

"Usually no government's worse."

"It is," Hannah agrees. "It really really is."

Nathan squeezes her and she sighs.

"Maybe I could bribe dictators to be nicer."

"I don't think dictators are in need of money," says Nathan.

"They probably want something."

"Power, usually."

"I mean, I can give them that too, but only if they don't suck."

"If they didn't suck they wouldn't be evil despots, would they?"

Hannah looks at him quizzically and he murmurs an explanation of the word "despot" to her.

"I mean - if there were sufficiently rational evil despots it would work. If it were Elves it'd work because Elves can promise stuff."

"Promise stuff?"

"Bindingly, I mean."

    "Oh. That could be very useful," nods Nathan.

"Or mean, depending."

"Yeah, sometimes it ends up being a disaster. I'm not going to swear things carelessly."